Have you thanked a teacher today?

Did you know today is National Teacher Day? It’s always Tuesday of the first full week in May.

Being married to a teacher, I am reminded of this observance via the annual arrival of graduation announcements from Curt’s former students. Some of the kids were in his classroom; some of them ran on his cross country team. And they may not know it, but their invitations give my husband great joy as he celebrates their accomplishments and the time they shared.

It also reminds me of the teachers in my life who’ve helped shape my course. On my mind as I write this column are two: my 8th grade social studies teacher and the college professor who taught expository and persuasive writing. They are a study in contrasts.

Some of you may know my Social Studies teacher, Lila Hoogeveen, as she’s still active here in southwest Iowa. A creative dynamo, Mrs. Hoogeveen developed a marvel of integrated learning: the Convention of the Continental Congress.

This activity included a homework assignment to make a powdered wig to wear while the Congress was in session; a reenactment of the Congress’ agenda to create a Constitution for the United States; and ongoing personal journals, written in the voice of our assigned characters. The entire process modeled democracy in a way which still resonates with me.

The hours we delegates spent arguing our positions demonstrated powerfully the difficulty of our founding fathers’ work. It was uncomfortable, messy and slow, much like real governing. And that picture of our democratic process has stuck with me and given me patience during my own work as an engaged citizen.

In contrast, my college professor, whose name I cannot even remember, drilled into me strong skills without much appreciation or awareness from me. A creative writer, I wasn’t excited about the class, but it fit my schedule and fulfilled a credit. So I hunkered down and did the work for the desired grade.

It was a work-intensive course, with assignments for nearly every class. And my instructor marked each assignment with constructive criticism. We also had assigned reading to develop our understanding of logic and persuasion.

While this professor’s low key kill-and-drill style didn’t inspire excitement and admiration at the time, I credit her with my ability to tap out this column every other week without much difficulty.

Of course, these two teachers aren’t alone in my teacher Hall of Fame. I could tell you stories (and probably will) about other influential teachers in my life. I owe them all a debt and honor them for their work.

So today, I’d ask you to thank a teacher in your life. Copious research highlights that learning is anchored in strong teacher-student relationships. That gets lost in all the talk about test scores, accountability and reform.

Because no number can measure the skills, values and understanding teachers like Mrs. Hoogeveen and my writing professor develop when they give students their time, effort and attention. We need to remember that whenever we hear calls for education reform.

How did gun sales trump public safety?

“My friends know that I’m a pretty strong constitutional conservative,” wrote one of my Facebook friends last Wednesday afternoon, “But I’m not sure how a law that would have strictly forbidden a national gun registry is supposed to lead to a national gun registry. Feeling lost,” he concluded with a sad-faced emoticon.

He was referring to the fact that despite 90 percent of Americans supporting legislation to institute criminal background checks for all gun purchases, including online and at gun shows, the U.S. Senate was unable to pass it.

How did this happen?

Well for one thing, gun lobbying groups and right-wing pundits smeared the proposed legislation. To manipulate individual gun owners, and more importantly Congress, to protect all gun sales, they misrepresented the bill as mandating a national gun registry.

As the New York Times reported: “The National Rifle Association mobilized members to blanket the Senate with phone calls, e-mails and letters.”

On Fox News, Eric Bolling argued the legislation mandated a national gun registry, even though it specifically strengthened an existing law outlawing such a registry. And on his April 10 program, right wing radio announcer Mark Levin implied the law would create a database of gun owners and perhaps even lead to genocide. Another Fox News contributor, Erick Erickson, tweeted liberal doctors might one day diagnose Christians as “too crazy for gun ownership.”

Where do they get this stuff? They make it up to get credulous voters to advocate for their point of view. And apparently it works on Congress people, too.

As The New York Times article noted, our Senator Charles E. Grassley contributed nothing more to the debate than the tired old saw: “Criminals do not submit to background checks now. They will not submit to expanded background checks.”

Yet a recent NBC news report noted: “The numbers show that background checks do keep guns out of the hands of at least some people who are not supposed to have them. Nearly 1.8 million applications for firearm transfers or permits were denied between the passage of the [Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act] law in March 1994 and December 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The FBI and state law enforcement denied firearm purchases to 153,000 people in 2010 alone, the most recent year for which data is available.”

And another recent New York Times story, titled “Seeking Gun or Selling One, Web is Land of Few Rules,” reported: “A 2011 undercover investigation by the City of New York examined private party gun sellers on a range of Web sites, including Armslist, to see if they would sell guns to someone who said that they probably could not pass a background check. (Federal law bars sales to any person the seller has reason to believe is prohibited from purchasing firearms). Investigators found seventy-seven of 125 online sellers agreed to sell the weapons anyway.”

Ultimately, those sellers chose the money from the sale over the safety of the public. Profit before people.

If that’s what we value, we really are lost.

What do we owe each other?

This question was penned recently by a high school student in Austin, Texas and shared by a friend on Facebook.

Deb’s students come from varied ethnic and economic backgrounds, many with numerous challenges to overcome, and she works diligently with love to give them a safe place to learn, grow and become themselves. She often posts about her classroom encounters.

But this question really stopped me. It echoed a question that popped out of my husband’s mouth during a discussion one evening: “Are we all in this alone?”

Well, are we?

Citizens, we know via polling, want to preserve social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and unemployment. But to hear politicians, pundits and even some of these same citizens, talk about these programs, they only serve deadbeat freeloaders.

In addition, plenty of citizens complain about income taxes without recognizing they pay for vital government services. Too many don’t understand our progressive tax system was designed to prevent income inequality because rates rise incrementally according to each level’s ability to pay.

Yet our progressive tax system has been systematically eroded over the last 40 years to benefit the wealthy. So today, we hear proposals for flat taxes as a way to “simplify” the tax code. (It’s a trap, people!)

And to get back to the original question, what’s wrong with paying taxes to help build our national, state or local community? Do we really all go it alone?

Did you build the road you drive to work on? Do you put out your own fires? Do you have your own hospital and school? Do you check your own food supply and develop your own vaccines? Or do you take advantage of all these services via your government?

Generally speaking, we all do better when we ALL do better, including, as they are called in the Good Book, the least among us. In fact, most major faiths call for hospitality or care of others.

How does America do by this standard? According to an article by Paul Buchhelt titled, “Five Ugly Extremes of Inequality in America,” out of 141 countries, we have the 4th highest degree of wealth inequality, ranking behind only Russia, Ukraine and Lebanon.

And a recent YouTube Video titled “Wealth Inequality in America,” laid bare the difference between our beliefs about wealth distribution and the reality. As the video notes, the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 80 percent only has 7 percent between them.

So to answer “What do we owe each other?” I think we, first, have to acknowledge our common life. We are connected.

In a recent blog post titled, “On God’s Side: For the Common Good,” Rev. Jim Wallis writes: “That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths — love your neighbor as yourself — still the most transformational ethic in history.”

Because as Wallis concludes, “Our life together can be better.”

If you mandate it, why not fund it?

As I was doing my morning reading last week, I did a quick check of my Facebook page to discover a post by a friend and member of a local school board. It linked to a KMA story about the Iowa Senate passing a school radon bill. My friend’s comment noted without the funding, the bill wasn’t much help to schools.

In other words, it’s just another “unfunded mandate.”

From my years tracking state education legislation, I can say this follows the usual pattern of picking issues and pushing through one-size-fits-all fixes. These fixes often turn into political theater, giving legislators issues on which to run their next campaign. But they create headaches for local level officials charged with implementation because they are passed without the funding that would make them work.

In this case, without additional funding to help schools pay for installation of any needed radon mitigation system, requiring it becomes a burden more likely to erode a district’s education program by taking money away from kids’ learning or other district needs. Currently, that’s how the legislation reads.

And such legislation distracts from the real responsibility of legislators to tax and spend for the common good. Their job, first and foremost, is to provide the means (money) for public services, not the details of their operation.

As one southwest Iowa legislator noted when I made a visit to the Capitol in February, from the beginning of his legislative career, he specialized, serving on agricultural and human service committees. Too many issues come before the legislature for him to be an expert in all, he said.

Which leads me to ask why legislators are passing legislation at this level of detail, instead of appropriating adequate education funds to allow local officials to do the job of providing safe schools? Ironically, this same legislator registered a similar complaint about working with the federal government on water quality standards in Iowa.

But getting back to radon, it is very definitely a public health issue, and we want to protect our children. If it’s a priority, then it’s the legislature’s job to appropriate the funds to pay for this public safety law. However, without the funding, it’s simply marketing for the next election.

If legislators are serious about public needs, they need to be willing to fund them. That’s why Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to tax. And our state constitution states: “Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people.” No government can perform these duties without funds.

Likewise, schools can’t fix a radon problem without funds.

So if state legislators really want to protect our schools from radon, they need to provide the funds for it. Either attach appropriations to the radon bill or increase allowable growth to cover it instead of asking schools to cut already tight budgets or local property taxpayers to pick up the bill.

Basic skills testing: What’s in a number?

Education has been on my mind a lot lately. But then, I live with a teacher and student, so it is always front and center at my house.

The past week, my daughter has been sharing about the annual run-up to basic skills testing. We’ve shared conversations about the importance of the tests, how the results affect not only her, but her teachers, school and, by virtue of the school being one of the largest employers, our entire community. We’ve searched the house for pencils to be sure she has a ready supply to thoroughly fill each answer bubble. And it’s been early to bed with a healthy breakfast every morning.

But this year, as I do every year, I wonder what my daughter and her teachers are missing out on while they go through this data-collection process? How many irreplaceable opportunities to experience the joy of learning are missed in the quest for some numbers?

In addition, I’ve been tracking our Iowa legislature as they debate what the governor has termed his education “reform” package and, once again, missed the deadline to pass funding for the next year. This deadline was missed not just because of disagreement about how much the state can afford. It’s also because the governor tied his reform plan (which is really just a repackaging of things many schools are already doing) to the money in an effort to push it through. Some of this plan includes which assessments or tests we’ll be using to evaluate Iowa schools.

That’s when I came across an article comparing our military and education systems. Written by Professor William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Read or Win Wars,” this article took a closer look at the misperceptions created when we reduce the results of our actions to numbers. His example compares the use of the body count during recent wars to the new penchant for test scores in education.

“What’s missing is the old-fashioned sense of education as a public good, as essential to democracy,” he writes. “ . . . Instead, today’s ultimate metric of educational success is not empowerment but rather employment. Education is reduced to training and success is measured by a post-college paycheck. Call it another form of body count: the number of (student) bodies who graduate with jobs. Never mind the ideals or morals of those students. Never mind their virtue. Those qualities can’t be readily measured, so we’ll ignore or dismiss them.”

I read this a week after I watched my daughter’s teachers and older school mates band together to provide for the immediate necessities of a student who lost everything in a house fire. What’s the measure for that?

As Astore concludes, it’s up to us to decide whether we want to churn out workers for jobs or people who can think critically, solve problems and lead.

Will guns protect us from government?

Since the events in Newtown last December, I’ve engaged in a number of conversations about public safety, specifically about how to responsibly regulate gun ownership. And I’m always amazed at the people who are convinced we need those guns to protect ourselves from our own government.

First, if we are truly a democracy, “we the people” are ultimately the government. So to paraphrase a Frank Zappa song, “If government is the problem, then we’re the problem . . . and maybe even a little ugly on the side.”

Next, these folks never seem to acknowledge that weapons rarely have been the key to resisting government tyranny. Plenty of bloodless coups have occurred via the use of other means. And I propose that, to some degree, folks who are paranoid about our government have already missed the boat.

Why? While they were watching FOX News, a handful of mega-wealthy corporate moguls bought up our press and rigged our system via campaign contributions and lobbying and have already taken over the government.

And to add insult to injury, via groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they’ve been taking citizens’ membership and purchase dollars to write laws that further decrease our ability to get ahead and lead a secure life. Not only do we serve their interests when we unquestioningly consume the information they present, but we pay the bill for them when we pay our dues or purchase their products. How’s that for a deal?

Government is just the straw man they’ve set up to take the blame while they shift our tax dollars to offshore accounts and steal our resources. We’ve been lulled to sleep with their slogans and infotainment, and we mutely accept that nothing we do can change it.

Poppycock!

The power of people uniting for action has always countered these powerful minorities. Why do you think corporate powers hate unions?

As one reader noted in a response to an earlier column, less than 10 percent of workers belong to unions today. But when media repeats the same tired stories of egregious union workplace requirements without providing the context of labor history in this country, people come to view unions negatively. The more isolated workers feel, the easier it is for business to limit wages, benefits and health and safety regulations. If workers fear losing their job, they’ll be easier to control. And these lowered expectations then extend to other workers in non-union industries.

So you can holler about keeping your guns to fight the tyranny of the government. But I say you’ve already lost the battle to the real power in the U.S. – corporate special interests. And your guns won’t protect you from that – only a united and well informed populace willing to speak up will.

How did I miss this?

That was my reaction last Wednesday morning when I stumbled across a blog post by 2009 National Teacher of the Year (NTOY) Anthony Mullen entitled, “Teachers Should be Seen and Not Heard.” I’d been contemplating the state of education in Iowa as our governor and statehouse Republicans hold education funding (called allowable growth) hostage in an effort to fast-track Governor Branstad’s education reform plan. Mullen’s post, though old, describes what’s wrong with education reform efforts across the nation.

Prior to the NTOY honor, Mullen, a former New York City police officer, taught at an alternative high school in Connecticut, where he worked with students one step away from dropping out. As National Teacher of the Year, Mullen spent a year travelling the country and speaking to educators and reformers about this country’s high dropout rate. Mullen blogged about his experiences.

In his January 2010 post, Mullen describes participating in a small group meeting about education. Around the table with Mullen were three governors, one state senator, a Harvard professor/author and a moderator.

Mullen, who described himself as a “fly on the wall,” recounted the conversation around the table as the politicians and professor expressed their opinions. The politicians swapped comments about the quality of teachers, the need for accountability and the supposed benefits of running a school like a business. The Harvard professor contributed a mini-lesson about chaos theory in education.

Eventually the discussion anticipated teacherless classrooms, in which technology replaces teachers and schools.

Mullen narrated his thoughts as he listened to these ideas from people whose last experience in a K-12 classroom was their final year in high school. People, I’d add, whose own kids were probably grown and out of the house.

Finally, the senator asked Mullen, “What do you think?”

So Mullen shared his thoughts about the health care debate and wondered if he could sit on a panel to create a core curriculum of medical procedures to be used in emergency rooms. Suddenly he had everyone’s attention.

Mullen continued that he knows he’s unqualified for such a role as he’s not a doctor, never worked in an emergency room, nor treated a patient, but so what? “Today I have listened to people who are not teachers, have never worked in a classroom, and have never taught a single student tell me how to teach,” he concluded.

That’s the trouble with education reform – it’s being driven by people who know nothing about teaching. Meanwhile in Iowa, the resources our children and their schools need to continue their work is being held hostage while amateurs argue about reform.

By law (one signed by Governor Branstad during his first round as governor), the Iowa Legislature must pass school funding within the first 30 days of the session to allow schools to plan, certify their budgets and issue contracts. But for the last two years, he and statehouse Republicans have held school funding hostage in an effort to pass his education reform package.

What’s the hurry? Legislators’ job is to publicly and thoroughly examine and debate new policies. It is also to tax and spend for the common good. And first and foremost, it is to uphold state law.

Pass allowable growth for our children and schools. Then look at education reform, building it on the input of the experts and stakeholders – teachers, parents and students.